Saving Seafood

Navy to limit sonar to protect whales

November 5, 2018 — So, tomorrow’s Election Day and here’s hoping our democratic process has provided you with some suitable candidates worthy of your vote. If not, you can always write in the FishOn staff, based solely on our simple dual campaign promises:

“If nominated, we will hide. If elected, we will demand a recount.”

We think it’s what our Founding Fathers and Mothers had in mind all along – self-imposed term limits.

We also have our own method for choosing candidates: They should be strong advocates of the commercial fishing industry, fans of baseball and they should have sent us presents on our birthday and Christmas.

Shuffling through the pile last weekend, and gotta say: It’s not looking great for this crop of cheapskates.

But that’s us. Y’all should head out and vote. If nothing else, it’s an hour away from work. Unless you live in Chicago, where you can turn it into a full-time occupation.

The new Navy slogan should be “Shhhhhhh”

The U.S. Navy last December adopted the 10th slogan in the storied history of the military service (and its a collected advertising agencies). The slogan is “America’s Navy, Forged by the Sea.” Thank God the French Navy already had taken “We Surrender, Take Our Ship” out of the running.

Our Navy made some news last week when it announced it will expand areas in which it limits its use of sonar and explosives off the East Coast as a means of helping protect the imperiled right whales. It’s doing the same in the Gulf of Mexico to help protect the Bryde’s whale.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Whale protection, trawl limits entangle Maine lobstermen

October 10, 2018 — DEER ISLE, Maine — October is a peak month, according to the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, for feistiness in Maine’s population of hornets and wasps. Lobstermen too, judging by last week’s meeting of the Zone C Lobster Management Council at Deer Isle-Stonington High School.

The principal irritant is the still-simmering conflict over a rule adopted by DMR at the beginning of August establishing a five-trap maximum trawl limit for a 60-square-mile rectangle centered, more or less, on Mount Desert Rock.

The trawl limit was proposed by the Zone B management council last winter. The problem is that much of the western part of that area is fished by lobstermen based in Zone C — primarily Stonington and Deer Isle — who bitterly opposed adoption of a rule that Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher called “one of the more difficult decisions that I have made.”

Last week, the Zone C council reviewed a proposed rule change that would eliminate the five-trap maximum in a large area west of Mount Desert Rock. While that might improve the situation for some Zone C lobstermen, the underlying problem reflects unhappiness on the part of lobstermen from Zone B, with limited entry for new fishermen, over the number of lobstermen from Zone C who fish across the zone line in waters they fished before the zones were ever established.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

 

In Changing Climate, Endangered Right Whales Find New Feeding Grounds

October 10, 2018 — Amy Knowlton pilots the 29-foot research vessel Nereid out of Lubec harbor and into the waters of the Bay of Fundy, off of easternmost Maine. A scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life Knowlton points to harbor porpoises chasing fish in the wind-swept waters on a recent morning.

Then something much larger appears off the stern.

“Whale behind us,” Knowlton says, steering closer. “It’s probably a humpback or fin whale, we’ll get a better look.”

It turns out to be two humpback whales — a cool sighting, but not the kind she is after.

Knowlton is hoping to find the endangered North Atlantic right whales that she and her colleagues have been studying in these waters since 1980.

Right whales are large cetaceans, with big heads and no dorsal fins. Researchers used to count as many as 200 foraging here in late summer. But the whales became scarce starting in 2010, and their range shifted dramatically. Many more are now summering hundreds of miles north, off Canadian shores in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. More than 130 have been spotted there in recent months.

Marianna Hagbloom, a research assistant on Knowlton’s team, surveyed that area in August and said it was nothing like the Bay of Fundy.

“We had days where we were seeing about 50 individuals,” Hagbloom says. “Just right whales popping up left and right. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Read the full story at NPR

NOAA Memorandum on Whales Lays Basis for Much Stricter Regulation of Trap Fisheries

September 28, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A recent technical memorandum from NOAA on right whale recovery in 2018 could push the agency to require new limits on trap fishing technology.

In short, the memorandum says that the measures adopted to reduce the number of rope lines in the water have backfired.

Although the number of lines to individual buoys have been reduced, the remaining trawl strings have more traps and stronger rope.

The result is that whales are suffering more for entanglements than they were before the new rules were introduced.

The memorandum says that “stronger rope contributed to an increase in the severity of entanglements.”

“Knowlton et al.(2012) showed that nearly 85% of right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once, 59% at least twice, and 26% of the regularly seen animals are entangled annually. These findings represent a continued increase in the percentage of whales encountering and entangling in gear, which grew from to 61.5% in 1995 (Hamilton et al. 1998), to 75.6% in 2002.”

“Rough estimates are that approximately 622,000 vertical lines are deployed from fishing gear in U.S. waters from Georgia to the Gulf of Maine. Notably until spring of 2018, very few protections for right whales were in place in Canadian waters. In comparison to recent decades, more right whales now spend significantly more time in more northern waters and swim through extensive pot fishery zones around Nova Scotia and into the Canadian Gulf of St. Lawrence (Daoust et al. 2018).

Taken together, these fisheries exceed an estimated 1 million vertical lines (100,000 km) deployed throughout right whale migratory routes, calving, and foraging areas.”

“Each vertical line out there has some potential to cause an entanglement. With a 26% annual entanglement rate in a population of just over 400 animals, this translates to about 100 entanglements per year.”

The problem is that sub-lethal entanglements can impact the reproductive success of the population.

“While serious injuries represent 1.2% of all entanglements, there are often sublethal costs to less severe entanglements. Should an entanglement occur but the female somehow disentangles and recovers, it still has the potential to reset the clock for this “capital” breeder. She now has to spend several years acquiring sufficient resources to get pregnant and carry a calf to term, the probability of a subsequent entanglement is fairly high, and this will create a negative feedback loop over time, where the interval between calving becomes longer. This is certainly a contributing factor in the longer calving interval for females, which has now grown from 4 to 10 years.

The implication of this technical report is that substantial reductions in entanglements will be necessary if the long term decline in the population is to be reversed, and under the endangered species act, NOAA will be required to evaluate any actions that increase harm or fail to mitigate harm to the right whale population.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

 

Ocean Funding Will Benefit Right Whales, Sea Turtles, Salmon

September 11, 2018 — The National Marine Fisheries Service is sending more than $6 million to nearly 30 marine conservation projects as part of its Species Recovery Grant Program.

The grants are designed to help marine species that face threats in the wild. Four of the awards are going to the Maine Department of Marine Resources, which will do an assessment of how fishing impacts endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The Maine department is also getting grants designed to help the salmon population, which has been the focus of years of conservation efforts in the state.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Scientists and fishermen team up to help save North Atlantic right whale

August 23, 2018 — Whale researchers and fishermen are out at sea together on a two-week mission, combining efforts to help save the endangered north Atlantic right whale.

These two worlds have usually stayed far apart, but for the first time scientists are onboard a crab boat to do their field work.

It’s been a controversial fishing season in northern New Brunswick.

Whale protection efforts caused many fishing areas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to be closed off, angering fishermen who saw it as an attack on their livelihood — some even taking to protest.

Crab fisherman Martin Noel, captain of the Jean-Denis Martin boat in Shippagan, agreed to take scientists out in the gulf to help them carry out their research this year.

“We don’t want to be called whale killers,” Noel said. “We want to be called fishermen that are implicated in the solution.”

All season, fishermen begged Ottawa to involve them in fisheries management. They felt the federal government was imposing overly strict measures without consultation with industry.

Read the full story at CBC News

 

North Atlantic right whale disentangled 1 week after being spotted

August 7, 2018 — It took an hour and a half to disentangle a 10-year-old North Atlantic right whale that was spotted more than a week ago wrapped in fishing gear.

It was spotted by the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station Sunday afternoon, and reported to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and the Campobello Whale Rescue Team, which ended up disentangling the whale.

Jerry Conway, who has been involved in whale disentanglement for four decades, said the team removed most of the gear from the whale.

“We can’t say that it was entirely disentangled, but we’re quite optimistic that it has been,” he said Monday morning.

Conway said it’s hard to know how far the whale had travelled from the area where it was originally spotted in last week.

“This whale had been entangled for five days … so it could have been anywhere.”

But according to Conway, the whale was spotted just off the coast of Grand Manan Island and it was not co-operative with the rescue team.

Read the full story at CBC

Rep. Seth Moulton bill aims to protect right whales

June 11, 2018 — U.S. Rep Seth Moulton is a primary sponsor of a House bill that would appropriate $5 million in grants annually over the next decade to help in the conservation of the endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The bill, if made law, would require the U.S commerce secretary to provide competitive grants for projects related to the conservation of the right whales. It caps administrative expenses at 5 percent of the appropriated funds or $80,000, whichever is greater.

The bill carries a non-federal matching requirement of up to 25 percent for successful applicants. It also authorizes in-kind contributions as part of the matching requirement and “allows for the waiving of the match requirement if necessary to support a project identified as high-priority,” according to the proposed bill.

“The waters off Massachusetts are home to one of the planet’s most endangered species, the right whale,” Moulton said in a statement. “By providing competitive grants from right whale conservation projects, we can generate innovative solutions for saving an entire species. Let’s preserve some of earth’s greatest animals for future generations, rather than be a generation responsible for their irreversible demise.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

No calves as right whales return to Nova Scotia from Florida

May 30, 2018 — Only 16 whale sightings were reported anywhere south of Virginia this winter. The lack of sightings, coupled with at least 18 whale deaths reported in Canada and the United States between April 2017 and January 2018, leaves those interested in right whales concerned.

Scientists studying the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale logged another depressing statistic this winter.

In the more than 30 years scientists have tracked the movements of the whales between New England and Nova Scotia and the warmer waters off the Florida coast, this was the first time no calves have been sighted. That fact has only added concern to the growing sense of urgency after right whale deaths skyrocketed last year.

“Obviously you can’t tell a right whale it’s time to have a baby,” said Michael Moore, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and director of its marine mammal section.

But Moore and many other right whale scientists watching the highly endangered population dwindle before their eyes are seeking answers to the deadly perils the animals face, including collisions with the ships that share their space, commercial fishing gear that tangles the whales, and a warming ocean that appears to be wreaking havoc with their food supply and changing their migration patterns.

Read the full story at the Daytona Beach News-Journal

 

Right whale sightings prompt temporary closing of East Coast fishing areas

May 22, 2018 — East Coast fishermen were scrambling to move their traps this weekend after the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) announced plans to temporarily close a section of the Gulf of St. Lawrence on Tuesday, to protect two endangered right whales spotted swimming in the waters during aircraft surveillance.

The decision is the latest attempt to avoid a repeat of last year, when 12 whales died in Canadian waters, either from being struck by boats or tangled in fishing ropes that stretch from the surface to the traps below.

The department has already permanently closed a section of the gulf where whale populations are known to congregate, but that is lucrative for snow crab fishermen. This has raised concerns that if temporary closings also expand, fishermen may not be able to fill their quotas, or will be forced to cluster in certain areas and risk overfishing, said Carl Allen, the president of the Maritime Fishermen’s Union.

“It’s been tough,” he said, speaking on Monday from his home in Cap-Pele, N.B. “Today, anybody [with traps in the newly closed area is] scrambling to get out there and get their gear on their boat. Hopefully they can find a place where the crab hasn’t already been picked over.” The closing was announced on Sunday, giving fishermen 48 hours notice to remove traps from the areas or face possible fines. The area, which is east of the Miscou Island and just north of the area where fishing is already prohibited, will be closed for at least 15 days, longer if the whales remain, according to a department statement.

Read the full story at The Globe and Mail